I did not invent Read an Ebook Day—for that, we can thank Overdrive, a company that makes it possible to borrow ebooks from libraries. But I will, of course, take advantage of this extremely important holiday to remind you, gentle reader, that I run a publishing business called Take Control Books and that sales of our ebooks are what put food on our table. If you want to learn how to protect your online privacy, increase your productivity, solve password or Wi-Fi problems, get more out of your Mac or iOS device or your favorite apps, or do any of dozens of other things with technology, our inexpensive and friendly how-to ebooks are here to help. We offer free samples of all our books, and I think you’ll like them!
Back when Take Control Books started in 2003, ebooks were sort of a novelty. Since the Kindle and its several competitors took off, ebooks have become a pretty normal way to consume books. Amazon, of course, will sell you ebooks on any topic, as will Apple Books (formerly known as the iBooks Store). And as I alluded to above, your local library may participate in a program that lets you borrow ebooks for free and read them in an app on your computer, smartphone, or tablet. Whether you’re reading for pleasure, business, or education; however you go about obtaining your ebooks; and whatever device you read them on, you’ll benefit from a bunch of things you can’t get from paper books:
- You can search the book, even if it’s not indexed.
- You can leave notes and annotations without damaging the book.
- You can store thousands of books in exactly zero shelf space.
- You can often get interactive content of various kinds that couldn’t appear in print books.
- You can use text-to-speech to have your device read all or part of a book to you.
- You can look up words, do web searches, and get other contextual information as you read.
- In some cases (as when you buy ebooks from us), you can get free or discounted updates to books when they’re revised—just like software.
And look, I get it: ebooks don’t smell like paper, and they’re not quite as safe to read in the bathtub (unless your ebook reader is waterproof, as some are). You can’t give away (or get) used ebooks using Bookcrossing or Little Free Libraries. But you can still curl up with one in a comfy chair or on the beach, and you can usually buy ebooks for less than their print equivalents. So go read an ebook today! (Oh, and did I mention that I both write and publish ebooks? It’s possible that it slipped my mind.)
